الفصل الفصل 24 · 第24章

The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction cannot so readily be

achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than

with fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged

edges; hence the conclusion of such a narration is apt to be less

finished than an architectural finial.

How it fared with the Handsome Sailor during the year of the Great

Mutiny has been faithfully given. But though properly the story ends

with his life, something in way of sequel will not be amiss. Three brief

chapters will suffice.

In the general re-christening under the Directory of the craft

originally forming the navy of the French Monarchy, the _St. Louis_

line-of-battle ship was named the _Athéiste_. Such a name, like some

other substituted ones in the Revolutionary fleet, while proclaiming the

infidel audacity of the ruling power, was yet, though not so intended to

be, the aptest name, if one consider it, ever given to a warship; far

more so indeed than the _Devastation_, the _Erebus_ (the Hell), and

similar names bestowed upon fighting-ships.

On the return passage to the English fleet from the detached cruise

during which occurred the events already recorded, the _Indomitable_[9]

fell in with the _Athéiste_. An engagement ensued, during which Captain

Vere, in the act of putting his ship alongside the enemy with a view of

throwing his boarders across the bulwarks, was hit by a musket-ball from

a port-hole of the enemy’s main cabin. More than disabled, he dropped to

the deck and was carried below to the same cock-pit where some of his

men already lay. The senior lieutenant took command. Under him the enemy

was finally captured, and though much crippled, was by rare good fortune

successfully taken into Gibraltar, an English port not very distant from

the scene of the fight. There Captain Vere with the rest of the wounded

was put ashore. He lingered for some days, but the end came. Unhappily

he was cut off too early for the Nile and Trafalgar. The spirit that

’spite its philosophic austerity may yet have indulged in the most

secret of all passions, ambition, never attained to the fulness of fame.

Not long before death, while lying under the influence of that magical

drug which, soothing the physical frame, mysteriously operates on the

subtler element in man, he was heard to murmur words inexplicable to his

attendant--‘Billy Budd, Billy Budd.’ That these were not the accents of

remorse, would seem clear from what the attendant said to the

_Indomitable’s_[10] senior officer of marines, who, as the most

reluctant to condemn of the members of the drum-head court, too well

knew, though here he kept the knowledge to himself, who Billy Budd was.

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Footnote 9:

Cf. p. 63 note.

Footnote 10:

Cf. p. 63 note.

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